Suicide Mission (Guarded Secrets #1)

22: "We were going to kill you eventually."

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Tessa questioned as she stepped away from Jax, but walked right into another one of the men that originally had been on her side. The shock was prevalent in her voice, it crackled and broke as if she was about to cry. She forced the words to come out and shook wildly while she spoke. Fear was overcoming her, these people were her family to her, and now they were against her. A tear streamed down her face, she tried to cover it up to remain strong, but it wasn't possible. This time she wasn't holding the gun, she was on the other side of the bullet and it terrified her.

"We have to kill you, Tessa," Jax said easily. If I wasn't mistaken there was a hint of a smile on his lips as he said it too. "We were going to have to kill you eventually, but I honestly didn't think it would be this easy," he said letting the smirk curl onto his lips. "I never imagined you'd make it this easy, in fact we had gone through multiple plans and ideas, but this just got so much easier. I don't even have to do any cleaning up now, and that's the best part."

"What are you talking about?" Tessa cried, completely lost at what he was saying. There was a disconnect in her mind, she couldn't figure out why they had to kill her or why they would, because to her they were family, but to them she was disposable. She glanced between the men around her in complete bewilderment. She was distracted, Jax was focused on her and his men were circling around her to prevent an escape. Slowly, while everyone was focused on Tessa I stood up. "You are kidding right? This is a big joke!"

"It's not, Tessa. We played along all night to get you both locked in a room together," Jax said as he turned back to me and pointed the gun at me. I froze on the spot, my movements hadn't gone unnoticed as I hoped they would. "We can just say that you died at the hands of this girl. She's from the last group that was here and she was out for revenge for her fallen friends. She took the gun from you, shot you through the head, and with her training it wouldn't seem so out of place. Then in retaliation we killed her to avenge you."

"There's no way they would believe that!" Tessa cried. "Tony, Maria, even Hunter, they won't believe it! They would know that you guys killed me." Her voice cracked loudly, she knew it was a lie. She was trying to convince herself that someone, anyone, would figure out that she had been killed by her own cartel members. Deep inside, I was sure she knew that no one would even question it if they said that I killed her to get away. Once you were in the cartel, you were in for life, even if it meant a bullet to the head.

"They believe what we tell them, and if they don't believe it, they know well enough to fake it. Just like when we killed Anton. Everyone just knew to fake that they thought it was an accident, because they didn't want it to happen to them," Jax said as Tessa stared at him in shock. Her mouth was twitching as if she was trying to speak, but no sound came out. Her shock became widespread at his openness to admit that they had killed a member. "You don't get it Tessa, this isn't your family. This is a family business, but it's not yours. You were allowed to believe that for your cooperation at a young age, but it was all lies."

"But," Tessa cried before her words got caught in her throat again.

"Your father joined this business after your mother passes away. He needed the money to send you to school, so he kept you out of this for a while, but when you needed a job, you worked for us. Then when you couldn't get a job when you graduated, you came here, and you've been here ever since. Now it's time to pay us back. That's all it is, you paying us back for what we gave you," Jax said with a shoulder shrug as if this meant nothing to him.

"But why?" When their eyes turned to me I felt my eyes grow wide. My breath caught in my throats and I had the urge to slap my hands over my mouth to prevent myself from asking anything else. I hadn't meant for those words to leave my mouth, and now I was unfortunately back in the center of attention.